


Broken Crown

by kikiwrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, References to Depression, Sort Of, spoilers up to 170
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24897670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikiwrites/pseuds/kikiwrites
Summary: Fog isn’t quite the right word for what fills the house. In an objective sense, perhaps it is fog, but a better word might be soundproofing. It dulls the outside noise. Amplifies what’s inside. What’s been inside all along.....He promised he'd keep the statement quick this time. He didn't think he'd lose Martin so quickly.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 7
Kudos: 77





	Broken Crown

“Do we have to stop here?” Martin draws his arms close around himself. Jon doesn’t need The Eye to see the effect this place has on him. The memories it brings back. So far, the fog has given them both a wide berth, but Jon still feels the need to pull Martin closer. 

“I’m afraid so,” Jon says with a frown. The low hum of the Archivist’s hunger in his mind is already nearly too much to stand. 

“Do you think…” the sentence trails off to a mumble before Martin can bring himself to finish it, his eyes cast firmly on the ground. 

“Do I think what?”

“Can this one be quick?” Martin asks hurriedly. “I know you have to but I just- I don’t like this place.”

“I know, I can’t say I want to be here long either.“ Jon shifts on his feet. “Just stay close, alright? Looks like there’s a chair just over there, you could rest. Cover your ears. But when it’s too much… well. Do what you have to do to get me out of it.”

A hint of a smile tugs at Martin’s lips. “Is that permission to slap you?”

“Lack of permission didn’t stop you before,” Jon says with an eye roll. “But yes, if that’s what it takes, you have my permission.” 

“Good,” Martin says. “I guess I’ll just… take a seat then.”

Jon keeps his eyes on Martin as he settles into the chair and covers his ears. He’s reluctant to give in to the Archivist’s hunger, knowing it will mean he can’t keep watch over Martin. He trusts Martin though. He doesn’t trust the Lonely. Yes, he will have to keep this one quick. 

With a deep, steadying breath, he says, “Statement begins,” and loses himself to the words of the Lonely.

_Fog isn’t quite the right word for what fills the house. In an objective sense, perhaps it is fog, but a better word might be soundproofing. It dulls the outside noise. Amplifies what’s inside. What’s been inside all along._

_The man is at home. He can see the fog around him, but he cannot feel the way it cuts into his bones with an unsettling chill._

_His name… he doesn’t seem to remember. It’s like a word that’s been written down and erased, still there but… it hurt his head to try to make it out._

_He doesn’t know the fog has formed a crown around his head, shielding his ears and eyes. The curling crown whispers uncertainty to him. Is it even his home? He would remember his own home, of course he would, wouldn’t he? Every moment that led to this one seems unstable. Distorted. Muffled._

_He calls out for the others. Others? What a funny thought. There have never been others. He’s always been alone._

_But… one piece of the Before comes to him clear as day. Aloud the man says, “I met someone. I like him.”_

_His name, the man wonders. What was his name?_

_The fog does not let him find the name he seeks. Instead, it whispers a different thought. “He doesn’t like me though. Not really. I don’t blame him. I don’t like me sometimes.”_

_His name… what was his name?_

_For just a moment, the fog clears his eyes, and he can see the memory of a face, scarred and beautiful, a glimpse of greying hair before it slips away. He feels an ache in his chest that is oddly out of place. He takes a long breath, and the fog rushes in to dull the pain._

_And just like that, the man is in the house again, for the first time. But the tape recorder never stopped running-_

Jon is thrown violently back into awareness of himself and the room around him. The fog is thicker than before. He can barely see the tops of his feet. The angry hum in the back of his mind demands he finish the statement, but something isn’t right with this one. Why would there be a tape recorder in this statement, in the Lonely? Unless-

“No.” There is no trace of the Archivist’s low timbre in the word. Jon turns around, expecting, hoping, begging to see Martin in the chair, but there’s only an empty space and the desolate expanse of fog. 

“Martin? Martin!” he calls out. His voice reverberates back to him. It had only been a minute or two at most. How could he have lost him so fast? Only a minute or two… then again, staying in touch with reality was near impossible when he was taking a statement. Without Martin to slap him back to his senses, it could’ve been hours, days for all he knew. 

The hum in his mind morphs into a growl. “Shut up!” he yells to the ceiling and the gazing sky beyond it. “Not him. Never.”

Determined, Jon strides forward into the fog, past the single, unsettling chair in the center. Through the door lies-

He looks behind him, but there is only the shape of a memory of what was behind it. Before him is a new room. No, the same room. The same chair, the same warped floors and blank walls. And the same distinct lack of Martin. 

Room after room, never any different. Never any Martin. The sound of his shouting voice grows muffled with each threshold he passes. 

He has to Know. He’d made a promise not to Know Martin, but if the other option is to lose him forever, he has to choose this. It’s not a betrayal. He tries not to think too hard about how quickly he reached that conclusion. 

Finding Martin had always been easy. There’s a distinct line in his mind that he can always count on being there, and that line leads to Martin. He rarely follows it of course, save for those occasions he’d accidentally Known something about him, or when he’d tried to keep tabs on him when he was working with Peter Lukas. But its presence, however unfollowed, is a source of comfort. 

Now, he lets his mind travel freely down that line, searching for Martin, searching, searching-

The tape recorder clicks on.

_He can’t remember his mother’s face. Perhaps he didn’t even have one. No, that’s stupid, of course he had a mother._

_“You’re a bad son,” the man says to himself, “you left her to rot in-”_

_Where was she? Where had she gone? Had she ever loved him? The fog curls around him like the ghost of an embrace that just reminds him how desperately alone he is._

“No, no!” Jon forces himself back to the present. The string to Martin feels wrong, like it’s fraying at one end, weakening. He’s losing him. 

“One time,” he shouts to the Eye, “One time I need to Know where he is. You show me where he is or on my life-”

The words of the statement force their way out of his mouth.

_He had hobbies. Of course he had hobbies he liked… poetry, yes poetry. An open mic night might be good for him. No, no. Better to keep it to himself. Who would want to hear him anyway-_

With a shout, Jon stops the words in their tracks and turns off his tape recorder. His head pounds, compelling him to give in and drink Martin’s fears. 

“I want to hear your poetry,” he says, probably not even loud enough for someone three feet away to hear. “I want to hear you.”

Perhaps it’s a trick of his mind, but a tall shadow flickers in the corner of his vision.

The recorder clicks on again.

_You deserve it, the fog whispers. The fog will keep him safe, the fog will numb the worst of everything before. Yes, he deserves this. This is good, this is better-_

“Don’t you dare!” His hands are shaking now, unsure if the words he’d just spoken were from the Lonely or a taunt from Eye meant for him. 

He tosses the tape recorder aside, and it hits the ground with a sound that lets him know it won’t be recording anymore. What does it matter? A new one will show itself when he needs it. 

And it does. 

_The man sinks into the chair that isn’t his and says, “Not like I’ve got guests coming, is it? The house is empty, and, and honestly? I - I can’t think of anyone in the world who would care if I lived or died.”_

Jon isn’t sure if he’s breathing when he comes back to himself. It’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong, of course someone would care if Martin lived or died. He cares. Even if he’s the only one, which he certainly wasn’t, didn’t that count for something? But he couldn’t even hold on to him tight enough to remind him that someone cared. He couldn’t stop the fog from taking him again. If Martin forgot he was loved… then he was to blame as much as the fog. 

Jon doesn’t notice the ring of fog around his wrist. He does feel the angry clawing of The Archivist, trying to drag him back into Martin’s despair. 

“Damn you,” he says to the eye. To himself. “I may be to blame for this, but I will not let you take more from him.”

The tape recorder clicks on again, but Jon presses his lips shut and grinds his teeth together. Searing pain shoots through his skull. He clicks the recorder off and holds his finger on the button. 

“Alright Ceaseless Watcher, are you listening?” Who is he kidding, when is it ever not? “For once in your wretched existence, you look at me. I told you once. Not him. I will not feed his fear to you, you’ve taken more than enough. And you will leave him out of this. You think I need you to find him? We survived the Lonely once, and we can damn sure do it without you, so piss off.”

For a terrible moment, Jon braces himself for some wrath-of-God lightning bolt to strike him down where he stands. He can feel the heat of the watcher staring down at him. But he knows that just this once, he has the upper hand. 

He takes his finger off the recorder. It does not click on again. 

Looking for Martin like he has been won’t work, that he is sure of. He expects the answer to the natural question then how? to already be ready in his mind, but it seems he is fully cut off from the Eye for now. He’s alone. Truly alone for the first time in a long time. 

How do you save someone from the Lonely… how do you save someone from their own mind? From the most warped and twisted thoughts? 

A thought, purely his own, came to mind. The flicker of a shadow had appeared when he spoke of Martin’s poetry. Maybe… He took a deep breath, suddenly at a loss for words. 

“You remember I said I mellowed out on poetry?” he said to the fog. “It’s true, I did. But I told you I didn’t know when or why. That was a lie. I know exactly when, why, and who changed made me come around. November 3, 2018. There was a notebook I didn’t know on my desk. Now that I think about it, there was a damned cobweb on it. I was scared it was some new and terrible thing after me, but it was just… words. Beautiful words that painted beautiful scenes that took me out of the throws of the horror story that is our lives. And in the front, in the tiniest letters possible was Martin Blackwood. God this sounds so absurd, you better come back Martin. Come back to me and read me your poetry. Tell me everything. I want to hear it all, I want to know everything about you- the right way.”

There. The shadow again. A little clearer this time, definitely human-shaped, maybe Martin shaped. But then it’s gone again.

 _Was it ever there?_ Something in the back of his mind whispers A chill travels down his spine.

Yes. Yes, it was there. He would not be tricked into believing it wasn’t. 

Maybe it didn’t have to be poetry. Just anything. Anything to remind him he’s not alone. “I don’t know how I take my tea.” If nothing else, that had to get him to come back, storming out of the fog demanding _you what?_

Indeed, for just a moment, the shadow darkens the fog and there is the faintest echo of incomprehensible words. 

“I don’t even like tea all that much, not unless it’s from you, because I swear you make the only good tea in the whole of England. When everything started falling apart, one of the only things that made me feel steady was knowing there’d be a cup of perfect tea on my desk every day. It made me feel human. You make me feel human, Martin. Because through all of this, you’re the one who reminds me what joy is, what friendship is, what love is.”

A new voice echoes around him. “I-I fell behind. I was - I was too slow, and, and, and the fog caught up.”

“Martin? Martin!” 

He’s close. Jon can still make out his voice if he tries hard enough. He has to make Martin hear him, he has to. “Martin, If you hear nothing else, I’m begging you, hear this. You are important. You matter. You are loved. I love you. Martin Blackwood, I love you. Please come back to me. Please. I love you.”

The silence seems ready to swallow Jon whole. He’s gone, the fog tells him. You were never meant to find him anyway. Jon has little will to push away the whispers. He tries to call out for Martin, but his voice sounds far away, the fog before him so dense…

He sinks into the chair. It’s as uncomfortable as it looks. A tendril of fog wraps around his leg, almost shyly poking its way up. 

He can’t do this alone. Without Martin, he knew he would lose himself entirely. What reason would he have to cling on to humanity so fiercely? Everyone he cared about had turned their backs on him. Everyone but Martin. And now… now he’d lost him to his own hunger for fear. Martin was gone. 

“I want to have friends; I - no, I have friends.” 

Jon’s eyes snap up. 

“I-I’m in love. I am in love, and I will not forget that; I will not forget. I am Martin Black-”

“Martin!” Even to his ears, the sound is muffled, but it’s there. It’s there, and so is Martin.

“Wai- wh- Jon?” 

“Martin! Martin?” He leaps to his feet, sending the chair clattering to the ground. The shy tendril of fog retreats. He spins around, looking for the telltale shadow.

“Jon? Jon! Over here!”

“Oh!” There it is, distant but right in front of him, and Jon takes off towards it on stumbling legs. “Martin hold on, I’m coming, I just-“

The stretch between them seemed endless, like no matter how much closer he got, the shadow stayed out of his reach. Until-

A mass of dark curls. A patch of dark green jumper. A flash of wide eyes darting about fearfully.

And before Jon has much time to think, there are arms around him. 

For a terrible moment, Jon wonders if this is just a cruel manifestation of the fog that will blow away from him the moment he lets himself feel any relief. But he didn’t think any entity could so perfectly match the softness of Martin’s arms, the slight scent of fresh rain that seemed to cling to him, the way he always pressed his cheek to Jon’s head when they hugged. 

His fingers knot into Martin’s jumper, and he lets himself melt into him. They’re both shaking with cold and residual fear, but they’re together. They’re not lost, not anymore. Not alone.

He tries not to think too hard about how quickly he nearly lost Martin for the second time. Or how quickly the fog had taken a liking to him. The Lonely was cruel that way. Escaping it was not a one-time event. It wasn’t as easy as walking out of the fog. 

As they leave the fog behind a second time, Jon makes a silent promise, that he will not let Martin forget how loved he is. He does not Know that Martin saw his crown of fog too, and he has made much the same promise in his own mind.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in a very long time, but I couldn't stop thinking about how Jon would've reacted to everything in ep. 170. The title is from the song Broken Crown by Mumford and Sons. Much much love to my two dear friends for listening to my live texts while binging TMA, proofreading this fic, and for encouraging me to start writing again!


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